A word from Bari Weiss

Reading histories of the Holocaust, one is impressed by the efforts of Hitler and the Nazi hierarchy to conceal their project from the eyes of the outside world. I recommend Nazi Germany and the Jews, by Saul Friedländer. Volume 1 has the subtitle The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939. Volume 2, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, is titled The Years of Extermination. It has the subtitle Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945. The two volumes are abridged in Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945. On this point I also recommend Gerald Fleming’s Hitler and the Final Solution (with an indispensable introduction by Friedländer), still in print from the University of California Press.

In the video below Bari Weiss makes a point that has been on my mind since Saturday. Unlike the Nazis, Hamas has publicized its atrocities in real time. They flaunt them. The atrocities committed by Hamas mirror those of the Nazis in shape and substance, but they exceed them in shameless display of evil.

Here and around the world, however, we see public displays of support for Hamas. Current events have flushed out the many Nazis in our midst.

They have also flushed out the complicity of major American institutions. Here in the Twin Cities we have the University of Minnesota, whose leaders have issued a vacuous statement “mourn[ing] the loss of life resulting from the ongoing violence….” It would be better if they kept their mouth shut and pretended that moral idiocy and hapless cowardice were not their defining features.

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